


maybe one day she'll be free

by zornslemon



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Next to Normal - Kitt/Yorkey
Genre: Canon Compliant, College, Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1233802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zornslemon/pseuds/zornslemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't escape the past, but you can find someone whose past is as messed up as yours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe one day she'll be free

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the crossover square of my Femslash February Trope Bingo card. As always, a million thanks to Attila for betaing this fic.

Dawn’s been away from a Hellmouth for two weeks, and she still can’t shake the feeling that her life is in danger.

Not that she really thinks there are vampires at this frat party, which she’s only at because it seems like what you’re supposed to do as a college freshman. She’s heard Buffy mention something about frat boys and human sacrifices, but that was Sunnydale, so who knows what was going on there? Still, she can’t help but scan the room, looking for anyone with blood lust and even worse fashion sense than the normal college boy, which, given that half the boys are wearing cargo shorts and flip-flops, means that they have to have really, _really_ bad fashion sense.

She doesn’t spot anything suspicious per se, at least not of the supernatural variety, but she does see a girl standing alone in the corner, and she figures she should try the making friends her own age who aren’t Slayers thing. The girl is scowling and wearing too much eyeliner, but, hey, it’s someone.

“Hi, I’m Dawn,” she says, waving quickly.

“Natalie,” the girl says, sounding fairly unenthused.

“You’re in my writing class, right?” Dawn asks, because now that she can actually see her face, Natalie looks pretty familiar. (These frats really need better lighting. And to turn down their music. Dawn can barely hear herself speak.)

“Yep,” Natalie says. “Any idea what you’re writing for your personal essay?”

Dawn shakes her head, because it’s hard to write a personal essay when, technically speaking, she isn’t even a person. Not that she likes to think about the big ball of energy thing, but when she’s going through her past trying to think of something to write about, it’s kind of difficult not to think about how most of the memories aren’t even real. And in any case, everything worth writing about either involves demons, self-harm, or kleptomania, and she doesn’t really want to tell her professor about any of those.

“Hey,” Natalie says. “It has to be better than that boring essay we read in class.”

“The one about the guy who snuck into the music festival?” Dawn says. “Yeah, he kind of seemed like he was making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“Yeah, I was really inspired by his profoundly spiritual experience of doing something he wasn’t supposed to,” Natalie says flatly. “He’s such a rebel.”

“And none of use could possibly understand this profound experience, because we’ve never done anything bad,” Dawn says, looking pointedly at the beer can in Natalie’s hand. Natalie takes a long swig of beer in response. Dawn wrinkles her nose. “How do you even drink that? It smells really gross.”

Natalie shrugs. “You get used to it. What else are you going to do at this sort of thing?”

Dawn has to admit she has a point.

“So what are you doing here if you’re not here for the free alcohol?” Natalie asks.

“Figured I’d check it off my quintessential college experience checklist.”

“How’s it rate?”

“Kind of boring. And I think the floor is sticky,” Dawn says. Seriously, the Bronze got partially demolished every other week, and it still managed to be cleaner than this frat house.

“We could always leave,” Natalie says. “I hear the pizza place nearby is good if you’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably pretty good if you’re sober too. It’s pizza.”

Dawn smiles and begins looking to see how they can actually get to the door.

\---

They get pizza and exchange numbers, and Dawn isn’t sure she can check off “actually make a friend” on her college checklist, but at least she’s taking steps in that direction.

She winds up writing the personal essay about her mom’s death (after texting Natalie about whether she should write it about learning to use a sword and getting “omg make it as phallic as possible” as a response). She puts her heart and soul into the essay and winds up getting a B. Her professor says that her take on the situation is “childish” and that she needs to “develop a more mature and reflective voice”. Dawn’s not quite sure what to make of it, because she’s eighteen and not exactly the best at being mature, but she figures it’s something she can maybe try to work on.

She winds up hanging out with a group of girls from her Latin class most of the time. They’re not the sort of friends who she can have frank conversations with, and she’s pretty sure they never will be, but they’re around when she needs someone to tag along with on Saturday nights, which is all she really needs.

She and Natalie exchange occasional texts and roll their eyes at each other whenever their professor lauds some essay as genius, because, seriously, the readings for that class are the worst. She doesn’t see Natalie outside of class, though, and she doesn’t think much of it. It’s a big campus. Not, like, state school big but big enough that it’s not exactly weird if she doesn’t run into someone.

They’re waiting for class to begin one day when Natalie says, “I don’t think I’ve asked you the obligatory questions.”

“Huh?” Dawn asks.

“Where you’re from, what your major is, what you do for fun,” Natalie says, putting air quotes around the last word. “You know, the ones that you should probably just print out your answers to on a nametag, since you have to answer them so many fucking times.”

“Oh, well, I’m from Ohio, technically, but I moved from California about a year ago, and I’m a classics major.”

“Cool,” Natalie says. “I’m undeclared. I thought about being a music major, but I’m not exactly itching to be unemployed.”

Dawn nods. “What do you play?”

“Piano. Classical mostly, but I dated this guy who was really into jazz, so I can kind of pretend I know about that.”

“Cool,” Dawn says. “I always wanted to learn to play piano, but I never did.”

“You know, you didn’t answer the last question,” Natalie says.

“The last question?”

“You know, what you do for fun.”

“Oh,” Dawn says, because her main extracurricular in the last few years has been demon research, so she isn’t quite sure what to say. “I read?”

Natalie laughs. “Okay, that’s one of the most noncommittal answers I’ve gotten to that question. Didn’t you mention something about swordfighting?”

“Yeah, I do,” Dawn says. “I mean, I don’t do actual fencing, but my sister teaches self-defense classes, so she taught me how to handle a sword.”

Natalie snickers. “Sorry, that still sounds dirty. So is that the new hip self-defense weapon?”

“Yeah,” Dawn jokes. “I mean, why ward off an attacker with your keys when you can just stab him?”

“See, personally, I think it would be more effective to just walk around with a head on a stick. I figure if you’re brandishing one of those, people won’t want to fuck with you.”

Dawn is still giggling when the professor enters the room a moment latter.

\---

Parents’ weekend sucks.

Dawn doesn’t know how everyone’s parents have managed to make it to campus. She’s pretty sure someone once said their school has students from all fifty states and from dozens of countries, so that’s a lot of travel, but, somehow, everyone she knows seems to have gotten their parents to come. Buffy had said that she might come, but it turns out some ancient prophecy has scheduled an apocalypse for the same weekend, which kind of takes precedence.

The dining hall is nearly empty, since there’s some brunch reception thing for everyone doing parents’ weekend. Scanning the dining hall for anyone she knows, Dawn spots Natalie eating alone in a corner and figures she might as well join her.

Walking up to the chair across from Natalie, Dawn asks, “Hey, mind if I sit here?”

“Sure,” Natalie says. “Although the stigma on eating alone is bullshit.”

Dawn shrugs, sitting down. “True, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad to eat with other people. I take it your parents aren’t here?”

Natalie nods. “Dad thought about coming up, but I told him not to bother. I take it you’re in the same boat?”

“Mom passed away a few years ago, and Dad’s kind of spent the last decade living the cliché and screwing his secretary on some tropical island. Or possibly in Spain. Actually, I think it’s usually Spain.”

“Hey, it’s cool. My parents split up too,” Natalie says in a slightly bitter way that makes Dawn think that maybe some wounds haven’t quite healed. Then again, it’s Natalie. Dawn isn’t quite sure if Natalie ever sounds not bitter.

“You know what? I just don’t get it,” Natalie says a moment later, stabbing her fork into her potatoes.

“It meaning parents’ weekend?” Dawn asks.

“Yeah, I mean, like, half the point of college is that you get to move away from home. Why would you want your parents to follow you around for a weekend?”

Dawn shrugs. “Well, you get to show off, I guess? I mean, you get to show them that you can do well without them around. You know, that you’re more than…” She trails off, because what she wants to say is “the Slayer’s sister”, and there’s no way to explain that one.

“Yeah,” Natalie cuts in. “But, you know, take a picture, send a postcard.”

“That assumes they’ll actually pay attention to the postcard.”

Natalie sighs. “Touché.”

\---

They start spending more time together after that, getting together after class or on weekends, and Dawn can’t help but think that this is the this sort of friend she was supposed to make at college. (After all of Buffy’s warnings in high school, she briefly wonders if her friendship with Natalie is putting her into some weird, supernatural-related danger, but, hey, they’re not near a Hellmouth, and anyways, she can stake vamps a good, like, sixty percent of the time now.)

They don’t go to parties much anymore. Neither of them likes crowds, and Natalie’s found a senior who will buy her cheap beer. Instead, they curl up on Dawn roommate’s couch and watch campy horror movies. They buy a large bag of popcorn and throw most of it at the screen. Dawn has to clean it off the floor the next day, but she doesn’t really mind.

\---

“So one of the clubs nearby is apparently throwing some big Halloween bash, and it sounds pretty cool. We should go,” Dawn tells Natalie as they’re waiting for class to start one day. She’s still not a big fan of parties, but she really wants to know what Halloween’s like in a normal place (because, seriously, the demons never actually stuck to the Halloween is a night off thing).

“I don’t really do clubs,” Natalie says. “I’ll take a pass on this one.”

“Oh?” Dawn says, because that’s a strange response from someone who she met at a frat party of all things.

“They’re only fun if you’re on drugs, and I’m not doing that again.”

Dawn raises her eyebrows, because Natalie’s never mentioned drugs before, but she figures it’s better not to ask about it directly. Any time anything remotely personal comes up, Natalie always seems to give super vague answers.

“I take it you’ve had a bad experience with clubs?” Dawn asks.

“More like I always wind up at clubs when my life is a bad experience. High school sucks, you know,” Natalie says.

“Yeah,” Dawn says, figuring that’s pretty much all she’ll get out of Natalie. “I just thought it would be fun to go out for Halloween, since last time I did, I kind of almost died,” she explains, because, yeah, after the parking with a vamp incident, Buffy so wouldn’t let her go to anyone’s Halloween parties.

“Almost died?” Natalie says, surprised. “Have you secretly been some sort of badass this whole time?”

“I just… There are reasons my sister has to teach self-defense, you know,” Dawn says, fully aware that she’s the one being vague now.

“Yeah, got it, not going to pry,” Natalie says. “You know, if you really want to do something for Halloween, I think my RA’s running some lame ‘here’s a thing to do if you don’t want to get drunk’ so-called party that night. It’ll probably be kind of boring, but there will be free candy.”

Dawn smiles. “Sure. You had me at free candy.”

\---

As they reach midterms, their movie nights slowly start turning into study nights. Dawn’s classes aren’t hard per se. She’s had plenty of experience reading dead languages, and the good news is that this time, what she’s reading isn’t some sort of ancient scroll that could save or end someone’s life. The bad news is that the original _Aeneid_ is a lot more boring than most of those ancient scrolls, and it’s a slog to get through it. Natalie spends hours going through her notes from her intro psychology class (which, as far as Dawn can tell, is not taught by some demon-hunting government agent, so that’s a plus).

(“Do you think you’re going to major in psychology then?” Dawn asks one day as they head out of the library.

“I don’t know,” Natalie says. "I mean, it’s not what I want to do with my life or anything, but if I go crazy, I want to know what’s wrong with me.”)

As soon as they’re done with midterms, it’s Thanksgiving break, which is only half a week long and too short to even feel like a proper break at all. (Plus side: no bears, just some kind of dry dining hall turkey.) Once the break is over, their English professor assigns them a giant final paper, which they both complain about mercilessly, because that professor is still as pretentious as ever.

Of course, they spend a lot more time complaining than writing, which means that neither of them is actually done with the paper when the library closes the night before it’s due.

“We can go to my room,” Natalie suggests. “I have a single, so we won’t have to worry about sleeping roommates or anything.”

  
“Sure,” Dawn says, vaguely realizing that she’s never been to Natalie’s room. Dawn’s roommate goes out a lot, and she has really comfortable furniture, so their room tends to be the logical place to hang out.

Natalie’s room smells like coffee and looks like it hasn’t been cleaned all year—or at least like Natalie’s never bothered to make her bed or clear off her desk. The only chair in the room is the desk chair that came with the room, and it only seems polite to let Natalie sit in her own chair, so Dawn settles down on the floor next to Natalie’s bed.

“So what did you actually wind up writing?” Dawn says, since they had both spent a good week throwing around a ton of possible paper topics without actually picking one.

  
“A scathing criticism of the American educational system,” Natalie says. “I figure it will piss off our professor. You?”

“I’m writing about how our society measures physical ability in ways that inherently advantage men. It made sense, since I have to hear about all the sorts of drills Buffy puts the girls she teaches through.”

“Yeah, props to your sister for that,” Natalie says.

“Do you have any siblings?” Dawn asks, realizing that, for all she talks about Buffy, she doesn’t actually know the answer. Come to think of it, Natalie hasn’t mentioned her own family since parents’ weekend.

“No,” Natalie answers a little too quickly, which is weird, because it isn’t really a hard question.

“Well, it has to be nice being an only child. You don’t have to worry about everyone fawning over your sibling and forgetting about you.”

Natalie chuckles. “Just because you’re an only child, it doesn’t mean that anyone fawns over you.”

Dawn shrugs and supposes she has a point.

\---

When she wakes up the next morning, it takes her a moment to realize that the bed her head is resting against is in fact Natalie’s bed and that she must have fallen asleep at some point while working on the paper.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Dawn mutters.

“You’re cute when you swear,” Natalie says, still sitting at her desk. Dawn would ask if she got any sleep, but the empty red bull cans on the desk tell her the answer.

“I was hoping I would get some sleep in, you know, my actual bed,” Dawn says, equal parts groggy and tired. She wonders if the Red Bull that Natalie’s always guzzling is as disgusting as it looks. She’s been avoiding caffeine so far, but she’s pretty sure that it exists for times like this.

“Are you at least done with the paper?”

“Yeah,” Dawn says. “I mean, I was proofreading last night when I guess I fell asleep, so I’m probably missing some commas, but, yeah, the paper’s written.”

“Commas are for losers,” Natalie says. “Come on, let’s get some breakfast before we head off the last meeting of this terrible, terrible class.”

She looks at Dawn and smiles, and Dawn instantly thinks, “I love this girl.”

Well. That could be interesting.

\---

Dawn goes back to Ohio for winter break, and everything is pretty much like it was before she started college, with Slayers stopping by at all hours and demons popping up in the most random places. (Seriously, who would have guessed that they’d have to beat up a demon at a pizza place?) She manages not to get kidnapped at any point during break, which makes it one of the better months she’s had while staying near a Hellmouth.

She’s at lunch with Willow one day when she can’t help but let one of the questions that’s been bothering her for the past few weeks slip out.

“Hey, Willow, when did you realize you, you know, like girls?” she asks, fiddling with the straw in her drink.

“Dawn, is there something you want to tell me?” Willow asks, sounding equal parts curious and concerned.

“I… I don’t know,” Dawn says. “I mean, I never really thought I was gay or anything. I mean, sure, the only guy I ever kissed was a vampire, but I thought he was a hot vampire. Well, until the part where he tried to bite me, but that’s just sensible. But there’s this girl at school who I’ve been spending a lot of time with, and I really like her, and I think it’s in a crush sort of way.”

“Dawn,” Willow says. “You don’t have to figure out exactly who you’re attracted to right now. And you definitely don’t need to choose between guys and girls. Lots of people like both.”

“I know,” Dawn says. “Just… does it ever get any easier? You know, figuring out who you like?”

“You start to get the hang of it over time,” Willow says. “And just so you know, what you said about that girl reminds me a little of me and Tara when we were freshmen. You should ask her out.”

“Yeah,” Dawn says. “I really should.”

\---

Of course, saying she’ll ask Natalie out is easier than actually asking out Natalie.

They’re not in any classes together this semester, but it doesn’t really matter. They still get meals together and bitch about their professors and watch egregiously bad TV. (Natalie gets her hooked on _Teen Wolf_ by asking, “Hey, want to watch really pretty people act like idiots?”, and Dawn has to appreciate any show set at a high school where the mortality rate is almost as high as it was at Sunnydale.) The “Will you go out with me?” question is constantly on the tip of Dawn’s tongue, but it’s always too awkward and never the right time.

It takes some student group putting up posters for their Valentine’s Day dance pretty much everywhere on campus to get the question to slip out. They’re walking past one of the posters when Natalie snarks, “Yeah, that’s great for people who actually have dates on Valentine’s Day.”

“You could be my date?” Dawn says, not really thinking about what she’s saying.

“Yeah, that’s not pathetic at all,” Natalie says sarcastically. “Two single girls going to a dance together because they can’t find real dates.”

“No, I mean, like, we could be real dates.”

“Oh,” Natalie says, and Dawn doesn’t know what to make of it, but at least it’s not outright rejection.

“I mean, obviously, you don’t have to,” she says nervously, talking faster than she’d like. “I don’t even know if you like girls, and it’s totally, totally fine if you want to keep this platonic. It’s just that I do like you in a not really platonic way, so I thought I’d ask.”

“Shit,” Natalie says. “Dawn, I’m going to go crazy.”

“Okay, not the answer I was expecting.”

“I don’t know when, and technically, I’m not 100% certain about it, but I can be pretty sure, and please, please don’t ask why. And when it happens, I can’t keep you around, because you can’t handle it. You just can’t.”

Dawn nods, because she’s seen driven mad by grief crazy and brain sucked out by a hell goddess crazy, and she thinks she probably can handle it, but she doesn’t mind not handling it either. It strikes her too that she might not be the safest girlfriend to have, because she’s seen how Buffy’s and Willow’s and Xander’s relationships have all ended, and she might be away from any active Hellmouth, but she’s still the Slayer’s sister, and there are vampires pretty much everywhere.

“That’s okay,” she says. “And in return, if I tell you that being with me is putting you in mortal danger, just listen to me, okay?”

“This is one of those things where I shouldn’t ask, right?”

“Yeah,” Dawn says, because Natalie will probably have to learn about the vampire thing eventually, but now is really not the time to break that news. “So, the dance?”

“I can do a dance, I think. God, we’re a mess, aren’t we?” Natalie says.

Dawn smiles. “We were already messes. Now we’re just messes together.”


End file.
